Christianity, Unostentatious – Charles Spurgeon

AS you travel over the mountains and are smitten with thirst, you look for the cooling stream, but the traveler who has often passed the hills never stoops to drink of the little streamlets which run uncovered down the mountain side; he knows that their exposure to the heat of the sun has warmed the water, and taken away its grateful freshness and coolness; but he looks for the trickling rill which gushes fresh from the rock, or bubbles up as a spring, or has found its way under the moss and great stones all hidden from the light, and he loves to satisfy himself thereat. It is thus with our gifts and graces. If we expose them to public view, they lose their acceptability with the Most High God: but if we keep ourselves as much as possible from all ostentation, and seek to serve God humbly and in quiet, Jehovah himself finds delight in the gracious works of his own beloved people.